Pictures of Fr. James Groppi leading civil rights demonstrations, 1966-1969.

Ordained in 1959, Father James Groppi (1930-1985) was assigned to a predominantly black Milwaukee
church in 1963. He participated in the 1963 March on Washington, and worked for desegregation and voting rights in Mississippi and Alabama with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. From 1967 to 1969, he brought this struggle home to Milwaukee with demonstrations for open housing and other efforts to combat de-facto segregation. For several nights in 1967 Fr. Groppi led marchers out of black neighborhods to rallies on Milwaukee's "all white" South Side. Arrested on many occasions for civil disobedience, he was instrumental in calling public attention to segregation in Milwaukee and in efforts to overturn it.